


the boy who couldn’t love (due to heightened monoamine oxidase levels)

by acetamide



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: M/M, fairytale!au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-01
Updated: 2011-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-26 17:06:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/285783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acetamide/pseuds/acetamide
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's something not quite right about Jim Kirk.</p><p>Written for the prompt: fairytale</p>
            </blockquote>





	the boy who couldn’t love (due to heightened monoamine oxidase levels)

There is something not quite right about Jim Kirk.

McCoy first notices it on the shuttle to the Bay, when he strikes up a conversation with him after not throwing up on him. He can’t place it at first – he’s only just met the kid so he doesn’t know much about him, and his own head’s still a little messed up and fuzzy, but he gets off the shuttle feeling that there was something missing about the whole conversation.

The sunlight is blinding in San Francisco and he does a full circle, his gazes passing over all of the surrounding, bright-eyed cadets until they land on Kirk.

He’s staring right back, and he’s unreadable.

 

**

 

They go out to the nearest bar straight after matriculating. They’ve ended up rooming together and since neither of them have a particularly large amount of baggage, it’s a pretty quick turnaround between registering their codes at the door and leaving again. And it’s refreshing, going out for a drink with a guy who doesn’t know him and isn’t judging him for whatever he may or may not have done in the past.

They drink and talk and laugh and keep drinking until they can’t see straight and the ceiling and walls are merging into one big dome. McCoy turns to Kirk, and he’s about to suggest that they try to head back to the dorms, but Kirk’s attention is elsewhere and he doesn’t answer to his name. Eventually McCoy reaches out and pushes him and he turns, and there’s something in the spark of his eye and set of his face.

The last thing that McCoy really remembers is Kirk’s wink, and then it’s just a whole big mess of girls and glass and getting punched in the face.

It’s from that point that McCoy starts to learn about Kirk.

 

**

 

Jim Kirk is extremely intelligent.

He’s finished all of the recommended reading within the first month of them being there, and he seems to have retained the knowledge, too – he can recall facts and figures like they’re his own childhood memories, his family’s birthdates or his identification number.

McCoy asks him why he wasted his teenage years, why he’s never wanted to _do_ anything with his life.

Jim doesn’t have an answer.

 

**

 

Jim Kirk doesn’t sleep.

Well, that’s not strictly true – he does sleep, but it’s for only half hours at a time and even then it’s fitful and light. McCoy will wake up in the early hours of the morning and there Jim’ll be, sat cross-legged on his bed with his forehead slightly creased and surrounded by PADDs, absorbing information like he’s trying to fill a hole.

When McCoy asks him if he has a medical problem he shrugs, and says that he’s been like this since he can remember and if it doesn’t harm anyone else, why’s it a problem?

 

**

 

Jim Kirk likes sex.

He’s not obsessed, though, McCoy’s pretty certain – he’s more promiscuous than the average person but that’s nothing weird. It’s just that he likes his sex to be with a different person every time, and it’s not that McCoy’s judging him, but it’s becoming a trait that Jim’s defined by, that he’s notorious for amongst the rest of the cadets.

McCoy watches him move from girl to girl to man to girl in class and clubs and corridors, and he watches them all fall for his charm, and he asks Jim if he’s never considered settling down with someone.

Jim looks at him as though he’s going insane.

 

**

 

Jim Kirk likes to get drunk.

It becomes a routine for them – to begin with Jim had insisted that they go out pretty much every other night, and McCoy had told him to piss off. So Jim had checked out their timetables and calculated that it’s best for them to go to the bar every Thursday evening and every alternate Saturday. So that’s what they do, and every time the bottles and glasses accumulate on their table, and when they wake up the next morning their mouths feel like some small animal has taken up residence and they can’t always remember the walk home.

 

**

 

Jim Kirk doesn’t like to talk about himself.

Which is pretty understandable but McCoy is curious so he pushes, and with a combination of alcohol and persistence he manages to get stories about Tarsus, Grex, Frank, Sam, the Corvette, and the Shipyard Bar. In return he tells Jim about Jocelyn, Joanna, Ole Miss, Aberdeen, and Dramia, and they call it even at that.

The next morning, McCoy goes to see Christopher Pike.

 

**

 

“I need to talk to you about Jim Kirk, sir,” McCoy says, and it’s then that he knows he’s got Pike’s attention. He knows about Jim and Pike, knows how Pike’s putting his neck out for Jim, knows that he’s an old family friend. Now that he’s managed to get information out of Jim, he knows.

“Yes, Doctor?”

“I have reason to believe that Kirk should undergo full psychiatric assessment, following an unofficial and incomplete assessment of my own that indicates that he is psychopathic.”

For a moment, Pike just stares at him, as though he’s expecting this to all be some kind of twisted joke. But it’s not. It really fucking is not.

“Kirk is not a psychopath, McCoy,” he says eventually, with a frown, and McCoy wants to ask him which one of them is the one with the medical degree, which one has done extensive psychiatric studies, but he doesn’t.

“Do you know what the medical definition of a psychopath is, Captain?” McCoy asks quietly, and an uncomfortable look crosses Pike’s face. It’s the look of someone who doesn’t want to hear something bad but knows that he doesn’t have a choice.

“Kirk is not –”

“A lack of conscience and empathy. They don’t function like normal people – they manipulate, they intimidate, they wield charisma and sex and violence as their weapons and they don’t care. They commit crimes and they _repeat_.”

“You have no proof.”

“Superficial charm. Failure to accept to responsibility for actions. Prone to boredom. Cunning. Lack of long-term goals. Poor behavioral control. Promiscuous behavior. Juvenile delinquency. Impulsivity,” McCoy reels off, ticking them off his fingers one by one as he makes his way through the list, and with each factor his gestures become more violent and Pike’s forehead creases that little bit more. “That’s about half of the checklist approved for psychopathic diagnoses. I’ve got a copy of the full research and assessment if you want me to send it over.”

“That is _enough_!” Pike barks quite suddenly and quite furiously, standing from his chair and slamming his hands down on the table. “Jim Kirk is not a psychopath.”

“You can’t deny that he’s displaying typical psychopathic tendencies!”

“I’m not.”

McCoy freezes and he swears that his heart pauses for a nanosecond before continuing to thump wildly in his chest. His breath catches as his brain processes the two simple words and rattles through all of the possible implications, coming to rest at the simplest and most painful one of all.

“You know about this, don’t you?” he says quietly, and Pike clears his throat before straightening his uniform and sitting back down. McCoy unclenches his fists and realizes that he’s left marks where his nails had just been digging into his palms.

“Jim Kirk has displayed ‘psychotic tendencies’ since he was a young teenager. But he is not a danger, to himself or anyone around him,” Pike says calmly, leaning back in his chair. “Jim Kirk, as he is now, has the potential to be an excellent Starfleet officer. If he were to be cured of his behavior, then he could be the poster boy for the Federation. Either way, it’s worth the risk.”

“Sir, you can’t honestly expect me to just –”

“That’ll be all, Doctor,” Pike says loudly, picking up a PADD and pointedly not looking at him. “I trust that nothing mentioned in this room will be repeated elsewhere.”

And McCoy finds that his throat has closed up in shock and really, there’s nothing more that he can say.

 

**

 

It’s not until he’s lying flat on his back and staring up at the ceiling that he realizes what Pike said in those last few dismissive words.

If Jim were to be _cured_.

Only problem is, there’s no way to ‘cure’ psychopathy. He knows, he’s read the journals –nearly all psychopaths are considered not just incurable but untreatable.

So if Jim can be cured, then he’s not a psychopath.

Which makes things all the more complicated.

 

**

 

They have sex for the first time a week after Jim’s birthday, when McCoy’s not as drunk as he’s making out to be and Jim is in his perpetual fuck-fight-jump-work- _go_ mindset, and there’s a small part of McCoy’s that’s surprised it didn’t happen earlier.

They go through the motions – each thrust is met with an arch, each gasp with a moan, each bite with a scratch – but there’s something missing. Sure, it’s one hell of an orgasm when it comes, but it feels empty.

They lay there in the half-light for a few moments, skin sticky between them, and McCoy can feel Jim grinning into the crook of his neck. He’s about to ask what the hell he’s smiling about, but then he reasons that it’s a pretty fucking stupid question right about the same time as Jim suddenly pushes himself upright and pulls out of McCoy.

McCoy watches with a grimace as he jumps from the bed and avoids the boots and clothes strewn haphazardly across the room to get to the bathroom, and reappears a second later with a few hygiene wipes, some of which he’s cleaning himself off with and some of which he throws at McCoy’s face. And then he turns and climbs into his own bed, much to McCoy’s surprise.

“Seriously?” McCoy blurts, a little incredulously and just a little bit offended. “That’s it?”

Jim pauses in the middle of settling down and looks back at him, and he’s wearing a quizzical sort of expression – it’s a familiar one by now, and McCoy knows what it means, and he knows he’s not getting any further with this argument.

“Well, what else?” Jim asks and he sounds genuinely curious. And McCoy nearly replies with a sarcastic quip, but he changes his mind. He’s not up for this right now.

“Nothing,” he says instead, and rolls over to face the wall. The bed feels cold and empty and it shouldn’t be that Jim fits so easily into the gap, it shouldn’t be that McCoy can get him there only to find out that Jim just doesn’t do things that way. But McCoy’s known Jim for coming on four months and he should _know_ these things, he should know how Jim’s brain works and he does to an extent – he knows how psychopaths work. Hell, he spent six goddamn months studying psychiatry, but he’s stopped seeing Jim as a psychopath, now Jim is just _Jim_ , with his charisma and cunning and whip-quick mind and penchant for getting drunk and getting beaten up. It’s just Jim.

It’s at that point that McCoy realizes that throughout the whole encounter, their lips never touched.

 

**

 

On the fifth of February, McCoy’s mother comms him, and tells him between sobs that his father has contracted pyrrhoneuritis.

Jim’s in the room when she tells him, sat on the back of the couch with his feet squashed between the cushions, and McCoy knows that he’s listening to what she’s saying even though he’s pretending to be concentrating on the PADD in his hand.

McCoy doesn’t say anything once his mother goes, but Jim does.

“We’ll find a cure,” he says, and when McCoy turns to him and looks him in the eye, he nearly believes him.

 

**

 

This is something that Jim can do.

Researching, experimenting, theorizing, synthesizing – these are all process that don’t require Jim to react accordingly and he’s better than any other technician or assistant that McCoy’s worked with in the past. He throws himself into it like it’s his own father that he’s trying to save and maybe that’s a part of what it is, but McCoy doesn’t care. It’s something to drag Jim from his perpetual boredom, something that challenges him and is _useful_.

McCoy thanks him every day for helping him, but he’s not sure that Jim quite understands why.

 

**

 

McCoy barely sleeps. He forgets to eat, forgets to go to class, forgets that Jo’s visiting. But Jim is there every time to remind him that he needs food, he’s got a xenobio lecture starting in ten minutes, his daughter will be arriving at San Francisco shuttle port the next morning.

After three months of torturous, unsuccessful trials, his mother asks that McCoy come home.

 

**

 

“Turn it off, son. Let me die. Please give that to me, Leonard.”

 _I took an oath_ , McCoy thinks desperately, and he can’t look away from the readings on the biobed that would make other doctors break out in a cold sweat. His father’s hands are trembling where they clasp his. His breath is harsh and pained and erratic between the biobed’s beeps.

 _Above all, I must not play God_.

 

**

 

Jim finds him sat out on the porch, kicking his heels in the dust. The air’s hot and dry and the ground is baked red across the yard. It feels like there’s a thunderstorm coming.

Jim sits down beside him, but he doesn’t say anything, and McCoy doesn’t know if that’s because he doesn’t know what his father’s asked of him or if he just doesn’t know what the appropriate response would be. It’s probably the latter.

He does let out a huff eventually though, and then moves to completely confuse McCoy by wrapping an arm around McCoy’s shoulders, and pressing their sides together.

It’s not quite real, McCoy’s aware of that. Sympathy and empathy aren’t things that Jim knows, they’re not things that he can process. The arm around his shoulder is there because Jim’s seen other people do this – it’s a learnt reaction, not an intuitive one. For all that Jim might want to comfort him he can’t, not properly, and it’s a gesture borne of intelligence and not compassion.

But right now, it’s real enough.

At twenty-three minutes past six, while his mother and sister cry in the kitchen, McCoy turns off his father’s life support.

 

**

 

When they get back to the Academy, McCoy watches Jim sleep.

There’s some part of him that’s untouched by the psychosis, some small part of his mind that can feel like a normal person. There has to be, there’s no other reason for him to have gone all the way to Georgia with him – for all that Jim acts as he knows he’s _supposed_ to, this has gone beyond that. This was Jim trying so hard to help his friend that he took what he’d learnt and applied it and went further than any normal person would have done.

There is something not quite right about Jim Kirk.

But it’s something that McCoy is going to fix.

 

**

 

It takes him another month or so of constantly grilling Jim until he finally gets an answer, and even then it’s purely by luck. He notices it one Saturday afternoon, after Jim’s got out of the shower and it wandering around in a towel and not really much else. McCoy’s watching him, he’s willing to admit it, and he watches as Kirk scratches at a point just to the left of his spine, near the bottom of his shoulder blade.

And then he does it again. And again.

“Jim.”

Jim pauses and looks over at him, and a glint flashes in his eye as his brain kicks in and assumes the very worst of what McCoy might be wanting him for at this very moment.

“Get your mind out of the gutter,” McCoys snaps, standing and crossing the room to where Jim’s loitering near the dresser. “What’s wrong with your shoulder?”

“I don’t know, it’s like… a lump under my skin or something,” Jim says amiably as he allows McCoy to manhandle him onto the couch. “I’ve had it since I can remember. It’s nothing important though, it doesn’t hurt. Just itches sometimes.”

“You ever had it checked out?” McCoy asks, and presses around the skin on Jim’s bare shoulder for a few moments. “There’s definitely something there, but it doesn’t feel like any sort of lump I’ve ever come across.”

“It’s not a tumor or anything?”

“No. I want to do a scan of your back, see what’s going on,” he says flatly, handing Jim the t-shirt that’s been lying on his bed for the last two days. “That’s not an organic growth and if you have no idea what is it, it could be harming you for all we know.”

 

**

 

The scan isn’t very helpful but what it does tell McCoy is that it’s a foreign body that’s not doing him any good. So he sits Jim back down on a biobed, applies an anesthetic to his shoulder, and whips out a laser scalpel.

He can see it, quite clearly – it’s a small rod, about twenty millimeters long and no more than five in diameter. It’s completely clear, and entirely unremarkable, and McCoy has a brief moment of wondering how something so insignificant could have any large effect on Jim but it clearly has. He carefully extracts it with the forceps and deposits it in the tray, quickly pressing a small, sterilized auto-pad to the cut that automatically seals to Jim’s skin.

Jim fidgets as McCoy picks the rod up again and turns it over in his fingers, bending it and peering at it. There’s something familiar about it lurking in the back of his head, some forgotten memory from a textbook – and then he remembers, and nearly drops it.

“It’s an implant,” McCoy says in shock, and Jim swings his legs around the biobed to see.

“An implant?”

“Yeah, they used to use these in the twentieth century, mainly for slow-release drug delivery.”

“Wait, you’re saying I’ve had a drug being pumped into my system for the last ten years?” Jim barks, his eyebrows shooting up, and he reaches out to grab the slightly-bloodied implant from McCoy’s fingers. “Seriously? What drug?”

“I can’t tell just by looking at it,” McCoy snaps and snatches the small rod back. “I’ll take it to the lab and run a full analysis. Whoever did this had better have one hell of an explanation.”

“So what, now you’ve taken it out, the drug’s gone?” Jim asks, folding his arms and screwing up his face. “Explain this to me, I’m not so hot on medicine from centuries back.”

“It looks like it’s made from a hydrogel polymer,” McCoy says, holding the rod between his fingers. “Very flexible, highly absorbent. The drug’s been released into your system via slow diffusion since the implant was put in. I’m guessing whatever the drug is has been stabilized inside the implant to avoid self-degradation. But this is old medicine, really old – I don’t know of any civilizations still using it. It’s archaic.”

“But who the hell would…” Jim begins, and trails off with a scrunched-up face and a soft curese. “Grex.”

“I’m sorry?”

“The Grexians,” he repeats with a sigh, scrubbing at his face. “Remember? Mom, Sam and I stayed on Grex for a few months when I was twelve, but we had to leave when civil war broke out. But there was a village near the base, and there was a woman… I can’t really remember, but I think she was some sort of sage or oracle or something. She was old, had bones and things hanging around her necks – you know, like those soothsayers from Earth’s history.”

“And she had something to do with this?”

“I don’t know, I can’t remember,” Jim shrugs as he pulls his t-shirt back over his head. “But that fits, right? The Grexians aren’t backwards but they’re culturally different, they believed in magic and destiny and prophecies and all that. And what else could it be?”

McCoy shakes his head, but he doesn’t want to say that he’s at a loss. Not when Jim’s counting on him to work this out.

 

**

 

“Monoamine oxidase. Type A.”

“Enzymatic oxidation catalyst, a flavin-containing amine oxidoreducterase. Dysfunction is generally responsible for neurological disorders including depression, schizophrenia, and psychopathy. The A isozyme acts preferentially on neurotransmitters such as adrenaline, serotonin and dopamine, typically inhibited by befloxatone and clorigiline.” Jim recites promptly, looking up at him from where he’s sat upside down on the couch. “What about it?”

“It’s what was in the implant.”

Jim nearly falls off the couch as he quickly twists himself upright and leaps to his feet, crossing the room in a few scant seconds to take the PADD of results and McCoy’s holding out to him. McCoy watches as his eyes scan over the results and there’s something there, something bright and intelligent and _fascinated_ – something that he’s not ever seen before.

“So when do the effects start to wear off?” Jim asks, taking in all of the information like a sponge. “When do the drugs leave my system?”

McCoy shrugs, and kicks off his boots.

“They already have done, I can see it. And it makes sense. MAO, that is – it explains all of the psychopathic tendencies, and there’s a fair few symptoms that I guess could be attributed to serotonin deficiency.

“Serotonin deficiency? What symptoms?”

“Basic stuff really – intense boredom, insomnia, alcoholism, temper, poor impulse control. An inability to feel happiness, excitement, love…”

“The oracle said something about that!” Jim says suddenly, his face lighting up with recognition. “She said that I wouldn’t ever be able to love someone until I found someone who loved me. She was wrong though, I mean there’s been a few girls, but she definitely did mention that.”

“Jim,” McCoy says quietly, taking the results from him. “She wasn’t wrong. You’ve not ever felt love – you can’t have, the implant’s made sure of that. Whatever it is think you’ve felt… it’s not that.”

Jim follows him as he settles on the couch, and the results feel heavier in his hands than they should. It’s strange, that one tiny rod could have such an impact.

“So why did the Grex oracle do this then? She must have had a reason.”

“I kinda felt up the village princess or whatever she was.”

“ _Jim_.”

“What?!”

“You were twelve!”

“I was horny!” Jim counters defensively, prodding McCoy’s thigh with his toes. “I had urges. It’s not my fault.”

“So she punished you.”

“More than just punished though, right? It’s like some sort of twisted old Earth fairytale. The old witch takes an offence at a young boy for no real reason and… and _curses_ him until he finds his true fucking love,” Jim spits bitterly, and McCoy shrugs.

“Old folk tales, made real with drugs. And you were young, probably given a psychoactive drug to stop you remembering. Pike knew, you know,” he says carefully, watching Jim’s face for any emotions. “He knew that something wasn’t right with you.”

And the emotions that do flash across Jim’s face are both alarming and achingly relieving at the same time because it’s more, far more than McCoy has ever seen. He worries, briefly, that they’ll stop on rage but then the frown smoothes out and a wry sort of smile takes its place, and Jim chuckles under his breath.

“Figures. Mom probably told him, they always were good friends,” Jim says, and the smile slips and makes way for something approaching confusion. “Hey Bones, my stomach, it feels… weird. Tingly. Hell, my whole body feels like it’s ready to burst or something.”

“That’s called excitement, Jim,” McCoy murmurs, and a slow smile breaks out over Jim’s face.

“So I guess this makes you my true fucking love, huh?” Jim asks him, his head tilted to one side, and for the first time McCoy can see what he’s feeling in his eyes.

“Yeah, Jim. I guess it does.”


End file.
